Dhoni might have spent the day defending his decision to get Joginder Sharma to bowl the final over against Australia, but in the heart of Sharma’s home ground, his family says it was a measure of the young team’s trust in him.

Inside the maze of two-storey houses in this Haryana town, next to the railway station, the Sharmas — and the lane is really one big extended family —- are savouring Joginder’s moment in the sun.

They almost missed the last over when the power went out, but caught the last four balls. “Dhoni told Joginder to bowl when they needed someone to put the pressure on the batsmen. This was after Joginder had been hit a few times earlier. We knew this team trusted Joginder, and he did well,” says Om Prakash Sharma, the all-rounder’s father.

Celeb-hood is an idea that hasn’t still sunk in. Om Prakash runs a paan shop across the railway tracks and says he had to work on his own doubts about his 23-year-old son’s plans. “I made him a ball of cloth and strung it up on this ceiling when he was a boy. I could never give him all the expensive equipment they want in cricket. But he has always kept on,” Sharma says, surrounded by his three other sons, and Joginder’s uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, gathered around the family TV to catch re-runs of yesterday’s match in the small living room, ventilated by a single window.

From 2005 till his moment in the Twenty20 sun, Joginder had been in the wilderness, ousted from the international side and trying to make a mark in domestic cricket.

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